Most works of art are, necessarily, bad...; one suffers through the many for the few. — Randall Jarrell Copy Share Image
The usual criticism of a novel about an artist is that, no matter how real he is as a man, he is… — Randall Jarrell Copy Share Image
It is like any other work of art. It is and never can be changed. Behind everything there is always The unknown… — Randall Jarrell Copy Share Image
Art matters not merely because it is the most magnificent ornament and the most nearly unfailing occupation of our lives, but because… — Randall Jarrell Copy Share Image
The safest way to avoid the world is through art; and the safest way to be linked to the world is through… — Randall Jarrell Copy Share Image
Goethe said that the worst thing in art is technical facility accompanied by triteness. Many an artist, like God, has never needed… — Randall Jarrell Copy Share Image
“Ruskin says that anyone who expects perfection from a work of art knows nothing of works of art. This is an appealing… — Randall Jarrell Copy Share Image
I don't need to praise anything so justly famous as Frost's observation of and empathy with everything in Nature from a hornet… — Randall Jarrell Copy Share Image
“She helped the hunter with the cooking as a husband helps his wife: when he had gone out to hunt and left something to… — Randall Jarrell Copy Share
We read our mail and counted up our missions In bombers named for girls, we burned The cities we had learned about in school… — Randall Jarrell Copy Share
One of the most obvious facts about grown-ups, to a child, is that they have forgotten what it is like to be a child. — Randall Jarrell Copy Share
Goethe said that the worst thing in art is technical facility accompanied by triteness. Many an artist, like God, has never needed to think… — Randall Jarrell Copy Share
Age could not wither nor custom stale her infinite monotony: in fact, neither Age nor Custom could do anything (as they said, their voices… — Randall Jarrell Copy Share
A poet is a man who manages, in a lifetime of standing out in thunderstorms, to be struck by lightning five or six times. — Randall Jarrell Copy Share
More and more people think of the critic as an indispensable middle man between writer and reader, and would no more read a book… — Randall Jarrell Copy Share
“The tags' chain stirs with the wind; and I sleep Paid, dead, and a soldier. Who fights for his own life Loses, loses: I… — Randall Jarrell Copy Share
First one gets works of art, then criticism of them, then criticism of the criticism, and, finally, a book on The Literary Situation ,… — Randall Jarrell Copy Share
Early in his life Mr. [Ezra] Pound met with strong, continued, and unintelligent opposition. If people keep opposing you when you are right, you… — Randall Jarrell Copy Share
Some of Mr. Gregory's poems have merely appeared in The New Yorker ; others are New Yorker poems: the inclusive topicality, the informed and… — Randall Jarrell Copy Share
A successful poem says what a poet wants to say, and more, with particular finality. The remarks he makes about his poems are incidental… — Randall Jarrell Copy Share
One Whitman is miracle enough, and when he comes again it will be the end of the world. — Randall Jarrell Copy Share
Robert Frost says in a piece of homely doggerel that he has hoped wisdom could be not only Attic but Laconic, Boeotian even -… — Randall Jarrell Copy Share
Most people don't listen to classical music at all, but to rock-and-roll or hillbilly songs or some album named Music To Listen To Music… — Randall Jarrell Copy Share
